$229 on Gasoline in 2021
Looking at my credit card's year-end summary, something caught me by surprise -- in 2021, I spent all of $229 on gasoline. It surprised me, as about a decade ago, I remember spending around $2,000 per year on gasoline.
Vehicles have gotten more efficient. Ten years ago, my 2001 Chevrolet Impala got around 22-25 miles per gallon. Today, my 2016 Mazda 3 gets about twice that. However, gasoline has gotten more expensive. Ten years ago, gasoline was in the $2-3 per gallon range. Today, it is about twice that.
The biggest factor, of course, is the pandemic -- without having to commute to the office daily, I drove a little over 3,000 miles last year. That's some 350 gallons of fuel that didn't end up in the atmosphere, that didn't need to be extracted, shipped, refined, trucked, and burnt.